Suspect arrested in theft of flatbed trailer

A Gold Hill man was arrested Wednesday on a theft charge after an anonymous tipster told police he was involved in the theft of a $1,200 trailer from a Medford meat-packing business earlier this week.

By RYAN PFEIL

A Gold Hill man was arrested Wednesday on a theft charge after an anonymous tipster told police he was involved in the theft of a $1,200 trailer from a Medford meat-packing business earlier this week.

Scott Anthony Schutt, 47, of the 1500 block of North Second Street, Gold Hill, was lodged in the Jackson County Jail on a charge of first-degree theft. He remained in jail Thursday on $5,000 bail, jail records show.

A second suspect is still being sought, investigators said.

Surveillance video from Crater Meat Packing on Biddle Road shows a man in a cowboy hat walking around the property talking on a cellphone at about 11 a.m. Monday. A Ford F-250 pickup then appears, driven by a man police believe to be Schutt.

Schutt, wearing shorts and a baseball cap on backwards, allegedly backed the truck up to a 10-by-6-foot trailer, hooked it up and drove away with the other suspect in the truck with him.

On Wednesday, police received an anonymous tip about the truck's location at a home in Gold Hill. A triangular box that had been on the stolen trailer was found there.

After interviewing Schutt, detectives determined he was involved in the theft and arrested him. Using information he provided, police later found the trailer at a house in the 1900 block of Pepper Street in Medford. The trailer was returned to its rightful owner, police said.

Detectives are working to identify and find the second suspect, police said.

Several other unsolved thefts of flatbed trailers have occurred over the past seven months around Medford, but police said they haven't linked Schutt to those crimes.